Contemplative Life

"The contemplative nun climbs Calvary and there she immolates herself for souls. Love crucifies her, she dies to herself and to the world. She buries herself, and her tomb is the Heart of Jesus; and from there she rises, is reborn to new life and lives spiritually united to the whole world".

(Santa Teresa de los Andes)

The contemplative vocation

What is the Vocation to Contemplative Life?

Throughout the history of Christianity, the call of Christ to live his way of life according to the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience has found resonance in many souls who, responding generously, gave their lives to the love of God and neighbor. Each Servant of the Lord and of the Virgin of Matará wants to be a concrete imprint that the Trinity leaves in history so that all people may discover the attraction and longing for divine beauty.

The contemplative life, seeks to live for God through total surrender, in the continuous search for the "unum necessarium", giving witness to the transcendent, through a simple life of prayer, work and penance.

We ought to strive to live a life of virtue, especially so that obedience, poverty and humility shine in us. To live totally for God is nothing other than to empty ourselves of self-love, of all that is not God. "You are dead, but your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Col 3:3). We are spouses of Christ and mothers, mothers of many souls, and the Good God makes use of our dedication, of our undeserved vocation for the salvation of souls.

The whole life of religious should be ordered to contemplation as a constitutive element of Christian perfection; nevertheless, "...it is necessary that some of the faithful express this contemplative note of the Church by living in a particular way, truly recollecting themselves in solitude..." (Venite Seorsum, 1). In this perspective contemplative nuns are witnesses to the transcendent, they proclaim by their vocation and way of life that God is all and must be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). The contemplative life is a sign of the exclusive union of the Church with her Spouse, the beloved Lord (Vita Consecrata, 59). Contemplatives seek to live and practice virtue in the likeness of the Word Incarnate, who perfectly fulfilled the will of the Father, hidden for thirty years in Nazareth.

Within the purpose of our Religious Family of the Incarnate Word, to evangelize culture, by prolonging the Incarnation, the contemplatives of the feminine Institute, with their life, want to found the whole work of the Institute on the “one thing necessary” (Lk. 10:42). For this reason, they are at the forefront of all the apostolic works of the Institute, since by their life of prayer and penance they obtain from the Lord the graces necessary for the salvation of many souls: "Institutes of contemplative life are of the greatest importance for the conversion of souls [...] because it is God who, through prayer, sends workers into his harvest, opens the souls of non-Christians to hear the Gospel and makes the word of salvation fruitful in their hearts" (Ad Gentes, 40). Thus contemplatives offer themselves with Jesus for the salvation of the world, and become spiritual mothers of so many souls and tireless apostles of Christ.

A Contemplative of the Religious Family of the Incarnate Word, also has the mission of being at the forefront of the Institute, praying for the missions and missionaries, especially for priests. In addition, each Contemplative House prays for a particular intention, such as: life, families, the unity of the Church, bishops, the fidelity of Religious Institutes to their own charism, etc.